From Easy Rider to Sightseers: 10 of the best road trip movies
The freedom of the open road, far from social, moral and economic strictures, is at the heart of the road movie, a theme it borrowed from the western. So in Dennis Hopper’s ramshackle but hugely influential 1969 drama, he and Peter Fonda’s LA hippy bikers naturally want to hit the road, but their “trip” descends into a nihilistic, countercultural subversion of that frontier spirit. Amazon/YouTube (£)
Kings of the Road
This 1976 drama by Wim Wenders
skirts the border of East and West Germany as it ponders the state of cinema, American cultural colonialism and male friendship. A film projector repairman (Rüdiger Vogler) and his depressed passenger (Hanns Zischler) are on a road to nowhere, soundtracked by that Roger Miller song. BFI Player
Badlands
Fifties South Dakota teenager Holly (Sissy Spacek) falls for unstable, young rebel Kit (Martin Sheen) and goes on the run with him after he shoots her disapproving father. Terence Malick’s 1973 debut is in some ways a typical lovers-on-the-lam tale, but the filmmaker’s now-lauded feel for landscape and atmosphere infuses it with a lyrical, fairytale quality. Amazon (£)
Sightseers
A defiantly British take on the killers-on-the-run thriller. Instead of Monument Valley and the Mojave desert, Ben Wheatley’s jet-black 2012 comedy gives us the Derwent Pencil Museum and Crich Tramway Village. Steve Oram and Alice Lowe’s sociopathic caravanners go on a road trip in northern England that escalates into a murder spree. Like Nuts in May, but with blunt-force trauma. BFI Player/ Amazon (£)
Midnight Run
Cop-turned-bounty hunter Robert De Niro thinks he’s got an easy payday when he picks up shlubby mob accountant Charles Grodin. Little does he know … Martin Brest’s sparky 1988 comedy of errors plays up the bickering pair’s differences as they travel across the US by various modes of transport, and brings out a hitherto little-seen comic side of De Niro. Netflix
Y Tu Mamá También
The road movie as coming-of-age drama. Alfonso Cuarón’s finely pitched 2001 Mexican film stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna as teenage friends who persuade a married woman (Maribel Verdú) to join them on a long drive to a remote beach. En route, however, they discover more about themselves than they anticipated. Available on DVD
Taxi Tehran